A contrarian, after 30 years of asking tough questions of the world, prepares to disempower tyrants.

So I had big ideas, and small ones too.  I wanted to get out of the big city, but I fell in love, and she wouldn't leave her parents.  Her family said, "Why don't you study to become a doctor?" "I don't want to poison people."  If I ever got cancer or some other incurable disease, I don't want to go to the doctor myself, because I don't what what they give.  They give drugs.  They also give stuff that burns your guts out.  The last time I went to the doctor, I had excruciating pain in my gall bladder.  I had a few nights in which I could hardly sleep in any position.  They did an ultrasound and found nothing. The doctor said, it could be cancer.  If it troubles you more, come back.  That was perhaps 20 years ago.  I never went back.  I don't want what they have.  I changed my diet and never looked back.  

It is hard being honest in the city--maybe hard being honest anywhere.  Yes, I could have been a doctor or a lawyer, but I did not seem much use for them, at least not as much use as they are touted for.  I was one of the early guys in the internet in 1994, but like all new technologies, I was skeptical about how it could be used to make a living.  I was skeptical about almost anything mainstream.  I searched for obscure books in thrift stores and used book stores.  I read about the Federal Reserve Bank before anyone I knew ever talked about it.  I learned about a strange but somewhat sensible political philosophy that seemed to be going nowhere called Libertarianism.  I scoured  through the huge city library for topics I found interesting.  I found books by John Seymour who preserved forgotten skills and crafts who was the significant figure in the back-to-the-land movement of the late 1960 in the UK.  Why was everything that interested me not consistent with my environment?  Dear me!  Always interested in something different than the prevailing culture or my immediate environment. 

I know that for many of us this has been the case.  We have seen things--things that don't make sense as we have been taught them.  Along the way we find clues.  We find things or truths that are out of place.  Why are so many people sick for whom their prescribed drugs don't make them better?  Why was I given so few vaccinations as compared to my children?  Why do high schools recommend reading 1984?  Why do governments run schools in a presumably free country?  Why were children in 1900 so much more literate than in 1942?  Why does anyone need a licence just to sell something?  Why are business skills not taught in high school?

Those are just some of the simpler questions.  I kept listening and collecting more questions that would lead to a greater rift between me and the prevailing tide.  Why were most children taught to read with the vastly inferior "look say" method rather than the long proven intensive phonics system? How could a fertilizer bomb make such an enormous blast in a multistory concrete reinforced building?  How could two 110 concrete and steel skyscrapers disappear in about 10 seconds each?  Why did astronauts never go back to the moon after Apollo?  Why for decades was the big blue marble picture of the earth all we were given in print and media since 1972?  How can dogs know when their masters start to come home from miles away?  Why do pictures of the bombing aftermath of Tokyo and Hiroshima look so similar? Why were people sent to prison for owning gold coins in 1933?  How can you see an island over 100 miles away on a clear day if the earth is curved like a ball?  Why is Antarctica so protected from any commercial interests since 1961? Why does the United States have the highest per capita prison population in the world?  Why have the wars on poverty, crime, and drugs seemed to have the opposite effect as you would expect if they were meant to achieve their stated purposes?  How can drug companies conceal that their tests showed that antidepressants work  no better better than a placebo?  How could drug companies produce required safety tests for drugs on poor people in developing countries? Why does the Federal Reserve have complete secrecy and complete immunity from any of their actions? 

The questions go on and on.  I believe I know many of the answers to these questions.  These are questions related to people of power who care not what damage they do to others from their decisions and actions.  The answers relate to promoting deceptions for the purpose of sustaining their own dominance and wealth over others at any cost.  The people who have stifled human freedom and dignity at the cost of everyone (against our consent) have produced a society so restricted in thought and action that people are afraid to perform simple natural acts of trade and exchange without penalty.  They tax us for every conceivable transaction they can imagine.  They have to make up every imaginable excuse to steal our value.  You can go to prison for not filling in a tax form.  You can go to prison for perjury for signing a tax form with a mistake on it.  You can be stopped for a defect on your car and shot and killed for making too sudden a move or speaking disrespectfully.  All your worldly possessions can be confiscated from you under the accusation of an official that you are a drug dealer.  All your cash can be stolen by police at a routine traffic stop.  The system is so big, no one knows how much it costs to run it.  No price at our expense is too high for them.  No lie at our expense is too big for them.  There is no crime for which they cannot seek immunity.   No wonder 1984 was required reading.  It was an instruction manual for both slaves and masters.

But now after decades of questioning and probing the reality around us, I have come to a conclusion.  Never stop asking the questions. Never stop seeking the truth.  We have to live by our convictions against the tide of constant deception.  We have to expose the errors of those who would imagine themselves as our masters.  We must always work to improve the human condition with others who have the same goals.  Exposing the errors of history, no matter how great, is a key to our success and liberation.  Now is the time, with the new technologies available to us to bring to light the things hidden, to spread prosperity to the needy, to disempower tyrants.